Funky Friday

24 January 2014

When somebody says "jazz harp," I don't blink. After all, I'm a Frecnh horn player, and there aren't many instruments that are less likely candidates for membership in jazz circles than the horn. Not many, at all -- but the harp is surely one of them.

Turns out that, in the right hands, both the horn and the harp make beautiful, soulful jazz. The evidence for the horn is right here. Brandee Younger supplies all the evidence you'll ever need for the harp.

I've been lucky enough to hear Younger perform several times. She and her band -- always an amazing band -- have consistently blown me away. It's brilliant, creative, funky music-making, as in the video below.

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This tune, "Respected Destroyer," is a Younger original and was recorded just a couple of weeks ago, at a tribute concert to Dorothy Ashby, a jazz harp pioneer. I like the way Younger writes as much as the way she plays.

The band, of course, is terrific. A bunch of young New York all-stars:

11 October 2013

Barbara's one of my favorite composers and bandleaders. Some people (that is, some Americans) think that European jazz is always cold and calculated. I don't believe it for a minute, and this song proves the point. Barbara's got soul. And a great sense of humor.

"Missing Your Kissing," Barbara Bruckmueller Big Band.

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"Missing Your Kissing" is one of the tracks on Barbara's first CD. I own it, and, trust me, it's terrific. You can buy it here or on iTunes.

20 September 2013

I first heard this a few months ago, and it still blows me away every time. Slow down Dolly Parton's original recording of "Jolene" -- slow it way, way down -- and it's transformed into something deep, dark, and funky. Love it.

19 July 2013

I was surprised how sad yesterday's news made me -- Detroit filed for bankruptcy. Like everyone else, I feel awful for city's residents. But it's more than that.

It has to do, in part, with the fact that my Uncle Leonard lived there for many years. Even more, it's a result of my love for the music (and musicians) that Detroit has produced -- from jazz greats like Kenny Burrell, Tommy Flanagan, Alice Coltrane, and Julius Watkins, to Aretha, to the stars of Motown, to Eminem. It's an astonishing legacy.

Parts of that legacy are wonderful in strange and surprising ways. Like the story of A Band Called Death. In 1974, before there was punk rock, there were three black brothers from Detroit with a band that almost nobody understood. But I think that you're going to love this music. Crank it up.

Great stories don't always get the attention they deserve. This one has, in the form of what looks like a terrific documentary. The trailer, below, helps explain what the band was all about. The film's website is here.

17 May 2013

Here's a post I never expected to write -- Funky Friday and Gordon Parks.

Until a couple of days ago, I would have told you that it was more likely that Barry Manilow would show up on a Friday than Gordon Parks. As much as I admire him as a photographer, writer, and filmmaker, his music has never done much for me. If you'd asked me to describe it, I'd have used words like "sappy," "sentimental," and "ersatz classical."

Well, yes. And no. Sometimes -- such as when he was forced to produce the soundtrack for Shaft's Big Score, the second of his films about the black private dick who's a sex machine with all the chicks, in only two weeks -- he came up with a real gem. Can you dig it?

Parks, the director, hadn't expected to write the soundtrack for the movie, but Isaac Hayes, who had won an Oscar for his work on the original Shaft, couldn't come to terms with the studio. So Parks stepped in a the last minute, knowing that he had to capture something of Hayes' magic. He did a pretty good job.